31 March 2018

Cambridge
University Press just published the paperback version of “Political Trials in
Theory and History”, a book published last year. The book discusses various
political trials in history and across different societies.

DESCRIPTION

From the trial
of Socrates to the post-9/11 military commissions, trials have always been
useful instruments of politics. Yet there is still much that we do not
understand about them. Why do governments use trials to pursue political
objectives, and when? What differentiates political trials from ordinary ones?
Contrary to conventional wisdom, not all political trials are show trials or
contrive to set up scapegoats. This volume offers a novel account of political
trials that is empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated, linking
state-of-the-art research on telling cases to a broad argument about political
trials as a socio-legal phenomenon. All the contributors analyse the logic of
the political in the courtroom. From archival research to participant
observation, and from linguistic anthropology to game theory, the volume offers
a genuinely interdisciplinary set of approaches that substantially advance
existing knowledge about what political trials are, how they work, and why they
matter.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jens
Meierhenrich, London School of Economics
and Political Science. Jens Meierhenrich is Associate Professor of
International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political
Science. His books include The Legacies of Law: Long-Run Consequences of Legal
Development in South Africa, 1652–2000 (Cambridge, 2008), which won the
American Political Science Association's 2009 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award
for the best book on politics, government, or international affairs, Lawfare:
Gacaca Jurisdictions, 1994–2010 (Cambridge, forthcoming), and, as co-editor,
The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt (2016).

Devin O.
Pendas, Boston College, Massachusetts. Devin
O. Pendas is Associate Professor of History at Boston College, Massachusetts.
He is the author of The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963–1965: History,
Genocide, and the Limits of the Law (Cambridge, 2006) and the co-editor of
Beyond the Racial State: Rethinking Nazi Germany (with Mark Roseman and Richard
F. Wetzell, Cambridge, 2018).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Political trials in theory and history
Jens Meierhenrich and Devin O. Pendas
2. The trial of Socrates as a political trial: explaining 399 BCE Josiah Ober
3. The trial and crucifixion of Jesus: a formal model Ron E. Hassner and
Kenneth Sexauer
4. Jan Hus in the medieval ecclesiastical courts Thomas A. Fudge
5. The French Revolutionary trials Laurence Winnie
6. The Soviet Union, the Nuremberg Trials, and the politics of the postwar
moment Francine Hirsch
7. 'Brown v. Board of Education': private civil litigation as a political trial
Mark Tushnet
8. The Eichmann trial in law and memory Devin O. Pendas
9. In the theater of the rule of law: performing the Rivonia trial in South
Africa, 1963–4 Jens Meierhenrich and Catherine M. Cole
10. China's Gang of Four trial: the law v. the laws of history Alexander C.
Cook
11. Anger, honor, and truth: the political prosecution of Neopolitan organized
crime Marco Jacquemet
12. 'This following orders thing is very relative': ascriptions and
performances of responsibility in the Causa ESMA, 1983–7 Christiane Wilke
13. The Microsoft case as a political trial William H. Page and John E. Lopatka
14. The trials of Khodorkovsky in Russia Richard Sakwa
15. Nashiri in Gitmo: the wages of legitimacy in trials before the Guantanamo
Military Commissions Lawrence Douglas.

Roman Law: An
Introduction offers a clear and accessible
introduction to Roman law for students of any legal tradition. In the thousand
years between the Law of the Twelve Tables and Justinian’s massive
Codification, the Romans developed the most sophisticated and comprehensive
secular legal system of Antiquity, which remains at the heart of the civil law
tradition of Europe, Latin America, and some countries of Asia and Africa.
Roman lawyers created new legal concepts, ideas, rules, and mechanisms that
most Western legal systems still apply. The study of Roman law thus facilitates
understanding among people of different cultures by inspiring a kind of legal
common sense and breadth of knowledge.

Based on over
twenty-five years’ experience teaching Roman law, this volume offers a
comprehensive examination of the subject, as well as a historical introduction
which contextualizes the Roman legal system for students who have no
familiarity with Latin or knowledge of Roman history. More than a compilation of
legal facts, the book captures the defining characteristics and principal
achievements of Roman legal culture through a millennium of development.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rafael
Domingo (1963, PhD 1987) is the Spruill Family
Research Professor at Emory University in Atlanta, USA, and ICS Professor of
Law at the University of Navarra, Spain. A specialist in legal history, legal
theory, ancient Roman law, and comparative law, he has authored and edited more
than twenty books, including Auctoritas (1999), Juristas
Universales (2004), The New Global Law (2010), God
and the Secular LegalSystem (2016), and Great
Christian Jurists in Spanish History (2018).

28 March 2018

Next week, Encounter Books will publish a
book on key figures in American constitutional history.

ABOUT:

In a fascinating
blend of biography and history, Joseph Tartakovsky tells the epic and unexpected
story of our Constitution through the eyes of ten extraordinary
individuals—some renowned, like Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson, and some
forgotten, like James Wilson and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

Tartakovsky
brings to life their struggles over our supreme law from its origins in
revolutionary America to the era of Obama and Trump. Sweeping from settings as
diverse as Gold Rush California to the halls of Congress, and crowded with a
vivid Dickensian cast, Tartakovsky shows how America’s unique constitutional
culture grapples with questions like democracy, racial and sexual equality,
free speech, economic liberty, and the role of government.

Joining the
ranks of other great American storytellers, Tartakovsky chronicles how Daniel
Webster sought to avert the Civil War; how Alexis de Tocqueville misunderstood
America; how Robert Jackson balanced liberty and order in the battle against
Nazism and Communism; and how Antonin Scalia died warning Americans about the
ever-growing reach of the Supreme Court.

From the 1787
Philadelphia Convention to the clash over gay marriage, this is a grand tour
through two centuries of constitutional history as never told before, and an
education in the principles that sustain America in the most astonishing
experiment in government ever undertaken.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOSEPH
TARTAKOVSKY is the James Wilson Fellow in Constitutional Law at the Claremont
Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.

TABLE
OF CONTENTS

Overture : the Constitution's third century

-- Builders (1765-1804)

1. Alexander Hamilton: A War Ends and a
Constitution Begins

2. James Wilson: The Philosopher of
Philadelphia

-- Fighters (1814-1897)

3. Daniel Webster: The First Generation
after the Founders

4. Stephen Field: Civil War and Uncivil
Justice

--
Interlude from abroad (1835-1888)

5. Alexis de Tocqueville and James Bryce:
Europe Visits at Mid-Century

The latest addition to Canada's Human
Rights History website (HistoryOfRights.ca) is a
complete collection of briefs to Canada's Special Joint Committee on the
Constitution (1980-1). The committee
solicited feedback from Canadians about the government’s proposal to patriate
the constitution and entrench a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It heard from
over nine hundred individuals and organizations, many of whom had a direct
impact on the final drafting of the constitutional proposal. It was also a critical
moment in Canada’s human rights history. The hearings highlighted how
Canadians’ conception of human rights had evolved dramatically since the 1940s.

This section of the website's archival
collection was first created in 2003 with a sample of briefs to the
committee. The updated page now includes the entire collection of briefs
available at the Library and Archives Canada. Many of these documents also
provide useful background information on some of the leading non-governmental
organizations in Canada during this period. The site includes an
index of groups and individuals who participated in the hearings. There are
also scanned copies of detailed briefing notes on the hearings and
presentations.

The path from the European law of nations to a universal system of international law has attracted wide scholarly attention in the past decade. A variety of approaches have challenged the narrative of a European system that simply expands and covers most of the planet in the late 19th century. For example, scholars identifying with the TWAIL movement (Third world approaches to international law) have criticized modern international law as a product of western imperialism and colonialism. Building from this critique, other scholars have begun to ask how non-European conceptions and influences shaped and re-formed the European law of nations on its path towards becoming a global system. How can we read non-European jurists, lawyers, state leaders and peoples as producers, not just consumers, of international law?

Politicians, lawyers and activists from non-European countries are now seen as more than mere vessels through which the tradition of the European law of nations was stamped into new contexts. Rather, scholars now explore the impact of local elites in shaping the way international law was received into their regions. But to what extent were they successful in shaping international law as a whole? We need a stronger analytical framework to explore the broader picture and a more precise understanding of how each region’s or nation’s encounter with international law shaped both their own experience and aspects of the international system.

The Interest Group for the History of International Law wants to support this emerging interest in contrasting and comparing regional experiences and invites scholars at every stage of their career to share insights on any angle of these developments, without geographic or temporal limitation.

Possible questions include:

What were the legacies of those regions and civilisations that had their own systems and traditions of law prior to the imperial encounter with Europe and its law of nations? Are there common patterns in how regional or imperial systems responded to their encounter with European international law, perhaps shaped by shared history, culture or religion, or was each experience specific and unique?

If elements of Roman law or the European feudal order are recognized as precursors to features of modern international law, should extra-European legal systems be looked at in a similar way?

Can we detect a difference between international legal doctrine and state practice in analyzing these encounters?

What were the roles of specific fields of law, be it the acquisition or transfer of territory, the settlement of international disputes, the norms and expectations regarding the conduct of war and the conclusion of peace agreements, the legal status and experiences of foreign merchants, officials or travelers or the process of entering the emerging universal system of public and secret diplomacy?

Abstracts must be submitted no later than 15 April 2018 to esilighil@gmail.com on behalf of the Steering Committee of the Interest Group, which shall collectively supervise the blind peer-review process of the abstracts. Applicants will be notified on the outcome of the selection process by 25 April 2018.

Brill has just published a new book on the
Tokyo Tribunal from a transcultural perspective.

ABOUT

While the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg has been at the centre of
scholarly attention, the Tokyo Tribunal has for decades been largely neglected.
This is surprising insofar as this tribunal was a well-organized Allied
endeavour and prefigured the international courts and tribunals of our day.
Eleven national teams were sent to Tokyo between 1946 and 1948 to bring about
justice in the aftermath of the Pacific War. This volume offers an innovative
approach to the Tokyo Tribunal as an arena of transcultural engagement. It
contextualizes legal agents as products of transnational forces, constituted
through dialogues about legal concepts and processes of faction-making. The
endeavour was challenged by different national policies, divergent legal
traditions, and varying cultural perceptions of the task ahead. Contributors
are Milinda Banerjee, Anja Bihler, Neil Boister, David M. Crowe, Kerstin von
Lingen, Narrelle Morris, Hitoshi Nagai, Valentyna Polunina, Ann-Sophie
Schoepfel, Lisette Schouten, James Burnham Sedgwick, Yuki Takatori and Urs
Matthias Zachmann.

TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of
Illustrations

Notes for
Readers

List of
Contributors Introduction

Kerstin von Lingen 1 Building Blocs:
Communities of Dissent, Manufactured Majorities and International Judgment in
Tokyo James Burnham Sedgwick

2 Sir William
Webb and Beyond: Australia and the International Military Tribunal for the Far
East Narrelle Morris

3 MacArthur,
Keenan and the American Quest for Justice at the IMTFE David M. Crowe

4 On a ‘Sacred
Mission’: Representing the Republic of China at the International Military
Tribunal for the Far East Anja Bihler